PETpla.net Insider 09 / 2021

PETplanet Insider Vol. 22 No. 09/21 www.petpla.net 45 EVENT REVIEW Decarbonisation through comprehensive recycling and use of resources European technologies and projects for a global circular economy In July, PETplanet accepted two invitations from circular waste management expert and equipment manufacturer Tomra: On July 7, the company hosted a webcast on the topic of CO 2 reduction and how climate change can be encouraged by comprehensively optimising waste management and recycling. The company worked with UK sustainability consultancy Eunomia and their experiences and fi ndings are now available online. Speakers for the event were Tomra’s Executive Vice President Dr Volker Rehrmann and Eunomia’s Director of Circular Economy Policy Strategy & Operations, Joe Papineschi. On July 8, Tomra and Borealis invited us into their pilot plant in Lahnstein, Germany, where extensive renovation and expansion measures have now enabled the sorting and recycling of an incredible range of plastics. sumed and that generates CO 2 in its manufacturing, and fi nally 26% to the food system. “We are focusing on the materials sector,” explained Joe Pap- ineschi, “as this is where we see great potential for improvement regarding a lower use of new material, improved and more frequent recycling loops with existing resources and overall, a fundamental lowering of consump- tion.” The ever-increasing consump- tion in this sector, resulting from better living conditions and growing purchas- ing power, also leads to increased energy use and CO 2 emissions. According to Eunomia, this would be much lower using recycled material rather than processing virgin mate- rial. Mr Papineschi demonstrated this by comparing the aluminium, steel, glass and plastic sectors, where sav- ings of CO 2 emissions are signi fi cantly better with recycled materials: this, he explained, should dictate how choices are made when the aim is decar- bonisation. A further slide showed a scenario for 2030, where the adoption of global installations for the optimised collection and processing of urban waste would lead to a reduction of 2.8 billion tonnes of CO 2 annually. “The technologies to take this step are currently available,” said Joe Papineschi. He went on to outline the essence of the Holistic Resource System, which is a mixture of a deposit system, separate material collection of certain material streams and the collection and sorting of mixed waste as it occurs in household waste. A key consideration would be to strengthen the responsibility of pro- ducers in this process. Following this, Dr Volker Rehr- mann gave more detail about the advantages of deposit systems in recycling, especially for PET bottles but also for metal and glass packag- ing, and discussed a diagram that compared separate collection and a deposit system. “Alongside the aforementioned CO 2 impact resulting from avoiding new bottle production, we can simply continue to process the available secondary resources,” stated Dr Rehrmann. “Flagship sys- tems are normally used for beverage containers and these have been oper- ating for many years in all the Scandi- navian countries, in Germany and for Tomra’s “Holistic Resource Sys- tems” webcast essentially exam- ined the levers that must be pulled to decrease CO 2 emissions and went on to examine to what extent improvements in recycling systems can contribute to this. Tomra had commissioned Eunomia to carry out a study to examine the effects that a combined waste management system would have on CO 2 output and resource optimisation if it were made up of the most ingenious and com- prehensive systems currently avail- able in Europe. The focus here was particularly on collecting and process- ing waste. Initially, by way of illustration, Eunomia presented some fi gures on the three main causes of CO 2 emis- sions. Of a global output of 50 billion tonnes of CO 2 , 51% is due to the energy industry, 23% to the materials sector, i.e. everything that is con- Dr Volker Rehrmann from Tomra Joe Papineschi from Eunomia by Kay Barton & Gabriele Kosmehl